


Keepsakes

by Tanaqui



Series: Awesome!Jakeverse (Jericho) [75]
Category: Jericho (US 2006)
Genre: Awesome!Jakeverse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-25
Updated: 2009-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/pseuds/Tanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heather's quirky take on life has always been one of her attractions for Jake. But, even knowing that, he can still be surprised by the things she does. Refers to events in my story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4815">The First Seventeen Hours</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribbler/pseuds/Scribblesinink">Scribblesinink</a>'s <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4837">Green, Green Grass of Home</a>, but it's probably not necessary to have read those stories to read this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keepsakes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Scribbler and Elena Tiriel for the beta.

Jake squinted up at where Heather was poking at something around the base of the chimney. Should be him up there, scrambling around on the weathered shingles, working out why the roof of the ranch house had started leaking when the rain came hammering down last night—except the conversation over breakfast quickly established that Heather had far more idea than he did what to look for.

Last time they'd been round that particular argument, he recalled, had been right before they went to Black Jack—and he'd nearly never seen her again.

Her voice dragged him from grim memories. "Looks like it's not too serious. We just need to straighten out a few shakes, and re-seal the flashing." She began to slide back down the roof. Jake watched nervously until she regained the top of the ladder he was holding. When she reached the ground again, he couldn't help giving her a hug to reassure himself she was safe.

She gave him a look that was half amused and half annoyed, as if she guessed what he was thinking. "I'll check if we have any roof cement. Can you find me something to spread it with?"

"I guess...." He wasn't sure what she needed, or what his mom would mind them getting covered with crud.

She kissed him quickly on the lips. "Why don't you grab a bank card from my wallet? That'll work just fine."

"OK." He tried to hold on to her for a moment longer, but she slipped out of his arms and danced away from him. "Any particular card?"

She looked back at him and shook her head. "Any of them will do. They're all useless now." Her voice turned rueful. "I don't know why I'm still carrying them around, except it made me feel kinda naked not to have them."

Jake nodded. He could understand that. In those first weeks and months after the bombs, they'd done everything they could to convince themselves the world was going to get back to normal one day.

It was the same instinct, once he'd retrieved her wallet from the bottom of her purse, that made him pull out the cards one by one to find one that had definitely expired.

The third card he pulled out, something else came fluttering out behind it: a piece of white paper, much folded, that drifted down to the floor. He bent to retrieve it, and paused when he recognised the words on it were in his own handwriting. What on earth—?

He picked up the paper and smoothed it out, and found himself confronted with his fax from the year before: the note he'd scrawled to reassure folks back in Jericho that Hawkins would make it, and that he'd be back as soon as he could manage.

"Jake?" Heather appeared in the doorway, clutching a slightly dusty tub of something. "Did you find—?"

He turned the paper around so she could see.

"Oh." She blushed. "I'd forgotten about that."

"You kept it...." He ran the paper between his finger and thumb, realizing the creases were worn, as if it had been folded and unfolded many times.

Heather put the canister she was carrying down on the kitchen table and crossed over to him. "Yeah." She shrugged slightly.

He looked down at her, still thrown for a loop that she'd kept the fax, hidden it in her wallet, obviously taken it out and looked at it and put it away again, over and over. "Why?"

She gave him a do-you-really-have-to-ask look, and then softened it with a smile. She reached up and covered his hand with hers. "It was a promise that you were coming back." Her smile turned rueful. "I knew that you were coming back for Emily, but I needed to see you again. Needed to know you were all right." She bit her lip. "Last I'd seen of you, you were being arrested...."

Her words brought back memories he'd mostly buried: his hands being yanked behind his back; the hood being roughly pulled down over his head; his shock and fury that he'd come in good faith, thinking Beck was a reasonable man and that he'd understand, and had that trust betrayed. His fear and anger at what Beck would do, to him and the town.... He closed his eyes and shivered.

Heather must have seen the tension in him, because she put her arms around his waist. "Hey!" Her soft call brought him back to the present. "I needed to know that, whatever Edward did to you, you'd be okay. As much as any of us are ever going to be okay."

"Because you didn't want to think badly of Beck?" Enough time had passed, and he'd regained enough respect for the major, that the thought of Heather defending him didn't make his blood boil like it once had.

Heather gave him a slight nod. "That was part of it. But mostly I was worried sick about you. And," she shrugged again and chuckled, "Cheyenne was coming, and we needed our town savior."

He raised an eyebrow and said teasingly. "Beck wasn't going to save you all?"

She pulled him a little closer. "I wanted you."

The paper crumpled in his hand as he slid his arm around her and drew her against him so he could kiss her. "And I wanted you," he murmured. "Even if I was too much of an idiot to see it." Without fully stepping out of her embrace, he turned and reached up to a ginger jar that stood on the top shelf of the kitchen buffet. Dipping his fingers inside, he pulled out a piece of paper even more battered than the one she'd been keeping. "I kept your fax too." He shook the piece of paper open to reveal the blotched text that had made his heart leap all those months ago.

Heather was shaking her head but she was smiling, her cheeks dimpling. "Funny kinda love letters."

He dropped the sheets on the buffet behind him and took her face in his hands. "Yeah, well, don't think either of us were ever any good at doing this the way you're supposed to." As he bent to kiss her again, he added softly, "Doesn't mean we didn't get it right in the end."

***

**Further notes:** Read the correspondence between Jake in Texas and Heather in Jericho: Jake’s [first fax](http://jericho.scribblesinink.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/fax1.jpg); Heather’s [ reply](http://jericho.scribblesinink.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/fax2.jpg); Jake’s [second fax](http://jericho.scribblesinink.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/fax3.jpg).


End file.
